


step(mothers)

by asiren (meliorismo)



Category: Diablero (TV 2018)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Motherhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 16:18:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17450273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meliorismo/pseuds/asiren
Summary: A child isn’t meant to be alone — Nancy knows that better than anyone else.





	step(mothers)

**Author's Note:**

> yes. no one will ever read this because no one Liked diablero to begin with so whatever. this is incredibly self indulgent anyway

_She really_ is _cute,_ Nancy thought, for what felt like the thousandth time. Mariana was all alone in the world, now, with both her parents _very_ dead — Nancy could relate, a little, but also not, a lot, because she was left behind, and Mariana was searched and found and then, finally, lost again.

Nancy missed Ventura, that’s all, even if he was dead-missing from her for not even twenty four hours. It was just the finality of death. People who leave you, you can’t get them back. They are _gone._ It’s forever.

Nancy didn’t know if that was actually the case, though. That was the real problem.

Because, I mean — what if?

“What about me?” Mariana asked, very small. Nancy didn’t raise her eyes from the task of cleaning off the blood under the girl’s nails. (Whose was the body it used to belong to? Did she know them

— did she wish them dead?)

“What about you?”

“My dad is gone.” she told Nancy, as if she could’ve somehow lost this part in the middle of the shitshow. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to resent Mariana. This girl who looked just like _him_ and said stuff with the same solemnity as her father used to.

(Like they were always talking about God in the middle of a church).

Also, she was right. Ventura was dead and Nancy faced her problems head on.

“He is.” a pause. “There’s blood on your waist?”

“I guess.” she muttered, but turned back without further protest. “Are you my stepmom?”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone treats you like you’re one.”

“A stepmom?”

“No.” she said, and sounded sad about it. “A widow.”

“When all is done I guess I am.” Nancy answered, trying her very best to not dig her nails against her own hand. It was just _bad,_ the whole situation was terrible, she couldn’t take it anymore, but she also couldn’t leave, never ever leave — someone had to take care of Mariana, wasn’t it right? Surely it must be her?

Nancy wasn’t lying when she told Ventura, both of them alone in that hellhole forgotten by God, that she had gone too far into searching for his daughter to stop now.

He’s dead.

She isn’t, though.

It’s probably time to move on.

 

(That was what smarter people called wishful thinking).  

 

“And this one is your bedroom.” she said, opening the door to a small room with a bed, a wardrobe, a Bible and a blanket green and blue. “We can paint the walls, if you want. I know that white is kind of boring.”

Mariana smiled, and nodded. Nancy was always shocked about how _aware_ she was of her own situation. It was scary for an adult, and downright terrifying for a child. How was it to live knowing exactly why — how — you’re in pain?

(Nancy didn’t have a clue, when she was young. She just knew that it would never ever stop.

That’s why she basically sold her soul to the first wannabe demon that showed up in her bedroom that night).

“What do you want for dinner?”

“Keta said you don’t know how to cook.”

“Keta is a liar. You shouldn’t listen to her.”

“She said that you used to live with them, but now you’re going to live alone because you have me.”

“Did she?” Nancy rose an eyebrow, skeptic. Elvis, maybe, but Keta? She had more common sense than him. Even if it was battered down and half forgotten.

“I heard behind the door.” she admitted, blush making her brown cheeks look pink. Nancy knew, objectively, that Mariana looked like her mother, the eyes and the nose and the mouth, but she couldn’t get past _his_ features: the eyelashes, the jawline, the smile, the _faith._

(It was Mariana who wanted the Bible beside her bed).

When she started noticing those things, well. It was a no-return way — she became incapable of stopping.

And suddenly it was like Mariana had nothing of Lucía at all.

 

“Are those women my family?” Mariana asked, two weeks later, after staying at Elvis and Keta’s during the day. 

“Who?”

“The blonde one and her sister.”

“Oh.” Nancy froze, taken by surprise — the fork with a big piece of quesadilla was forgotten between the plate and her mouth. “It’s a way of putting it.”

“Why?”

“Well, what do you mean by _family?”_

“You.” she nodded to herself, confident. “Uncle and aunt. And even Isaac, I guess, but on probation. He is weird sometimes.”

“Then yes, the women are your family. They’re Isaac’s daughters.”

“And are they your family too?”

“Yes. I’ve known them for a long time.”

“Then it means that they are my family from _your_ side? Or from dad’s?”

“What is it with the twenty questions?”

“Please, Nancy.” her eyes were big and brown and Nancy was lost.

Ugh.

“Both.” she sighed. She wasn’t cut to something like that. She was no (step)mother material. (But, well. Wasn’t she all Mariana had left? Nancy believed in raising up to the occasion. Slash absolute challenge slash responsibility). “We were a family, all of us. We still are. Without your dad, yes, but with you now.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, _oh._ Now eat your quesadillas before they get cold — I’m already a dreadful cook without adding it to the pile.”

“I think you’re good, Nance.” Mariana said, very seriously. “I think you’re very good.”

“Someone told me something like that, once. It was your dad.”

If she was a puppy, Mariana would’ve started wiggling her tail. She always did that when someone said anything (at all) about Ventura — the poor girl was starved to know _who_ he was, this man who raised hell for her and then basically (if Nancy were to be direct about it) stupidly died on her arms out of love. Nancy got it, she really did. She was always starved about him too. “What did he say?”

(Her body hurt all around, everything dull and exhausted and gray. She thought that she was finally in hell — this one had got her, maybe. One demon too many. Still, there he was, awkwardly trying to _not_ hold her hand. Or, like, hug her.

_There’s nothing evil about you, Nancy._

And, well. The truth was: when he said, Nancy believed him).

“You know.” she answered, putting down her fork. She wasn’t really hungry anymore. “What you just said.”

“Nance—“

“Good night, Mariana. I’ll be down the corridor if you need me.”

“You say it every time.”

“Yes. Because I mean it every time.” she wanted, for a crazy second, to kiss Mariana’s forehead and say something silly like _God bless you._ It was like she was becoming Catholic for sheer exposition. “You know the deal. End of the corridor.”

“All I have to do is yell.”

“Exactly.”

“Good night, Nance.” she said, glaring at her plate so she wouldn’t do it at Nancy. The girl was almost a teenager — Nancy kept forgetting that.

“Good night, Mariana. Sleep tight.”

 

Mariana sighed, resting her face against her forearms. She was reading a book, something probably Diablero-related that she found at Elvis’ library, but was looking suddenly moody.

Nancy rose her eyes to the heavens, and braced herself for the worst. She was only looking after her for three months and five days, but she already knew that, between the both of them, Mariana was the craziest.

“The devil made me do it.”

“What?”

“A girl in the street, today. She was yelling at her husband. He said that the devil made him do it.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t know.” she paused. “Could it be true, though, Nance?”

“What?”

“That the devil made him do it.”

“Nah.”

“But demons!”

“Men are garbage, Mariana. Let it go.”

“What about uncle?”

“Exception.”

“What about _dad?”_

“Exception.” she answered, firmly.

“You loved dad.” Mariana stared at her, desperately looking for something in Nancy’s face — eyes, cheeks, exhausted broken heart. Whatever it was, she must’ve found it, because she just went back to resting her face on her arms.

“You should give this book back to Elvis tomorrow. This is not the kind of stuff your dad would want you messed it, at least not before you’re, like. Eighteen. Like alcohol, drugs and tattoos.”

“And driving a car.”

“Yes. That too.”

“I’ll give it back, Nance.” she nodded. “After all, who knows what dad will say when he gets back? If everything is right, then we’ll all live together!”

Nancy smiled. “Of course. Just, please. Tomorrow.”

“Dude, we have a deal.”

 

(“I thought she was lying for the child’s sake, Elvis. It was what you said.”

“Your high horse looks beautiful from down here.”

_“Elvis.”_

“She decided that he’s alive. So she’ll look for him.”

“And what about Mariana?”

“Mariana is Nance’s. Leave them alone.”

“Elvis—“

_“Keta._ There’s nothing we can do but help them and pray for the best.”

“I don’t pray! Neither do you, or Nancy for that matter!”

“Mariana does. Nancy said that it makes her feel closer to Ventura.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“It’s for the best, sister. You’ll see.”

“If you fuck this one more thing—“

[dry sound]

“Keta! There was no need for that!”)

 

_I know that Lucía is the love of your life or whatever, but I’ve wanted to do that for a long time…_

Well.

[Nancy always faced her problems head on.

Daughter or no daughter in tow].

 

It’s probably time to move on.


End file.
